Initiation by Hammer - Part 3

Work is accentuated by the breaks and today, especially, Colin’s brisk walks to the toilet. He’d been at it every half hour and he spent about 10 minutes each time in there. He made it look like a casual affair, but from the looks and the hushed whispers of the other staff it looks like his game is up. Each time he goes he sets his watch. It’s like he's timing himself.

He returns later, a darkened patch on the groin of his trousers. The bloke’s got a bladder infection. The girls are pointing to their Line Manager’s slacks and laughing.

At 11 that morning Cecelia enters the office with the airs and graces of a queen. The girls hush and get to work. She’s officially the PA to the CEO and she’s a right bitch. She scans the room, sees something behind me and homes in on me. There’s a look of disgust on her face and immediately I hold up my hands.

Blood. Oozing, blood. His and her blood.

“I think we need to talk. Follow me,” she commands. She walks off down the corridor and I can hear the office gossip bitches talking behind my back as I follow her like a naughty puppy. The clacking of her heels echo down the hall. The hallway has begun to get grimy with red splodges of paint. It’s only then that I realise.

I stop in my tracks. Her left heel is covered in scarlet grime. It’s like strawberry jam, congealed globules have formed at the base of her foot. I can imagine the stiletto heel pushing through the soft membrane of a human eye and into the pudding of brain; the victim stricken in a death yawn as her heel sinks lower.

“Come, come,” she ushers and I have to trot to catch up to her. She makes a right turn and puts a hand on the door to the disabled toilets. She turns her head to me and gives me an adulterous look before pushing open the door.

I imagine myself entering the ghost train ride at the shows as a child. A man dressed up as a monster covered in stitches and needles greeted me and sat down next to me. Instead Cecelia holds the door open for me to enter. I step inside and nearly slip. I hold onto the sink and land onto the taps heavily.

My chest begins to pump. There’s arterial spray over the mirror. Like someone sprayed washing up liquid over it.

The light flickers on and we’re in a series of flashing, flickering light. I begin to see a mass of clothing on the floor. I see something dark widening it’s circumference near one end of it. The unmistakable form of a hammer is in the hand of the motionless form on the floor.

“He came at me with a hammer. The funny thing was, was that he kept on checking the time at regular intervals,” she says.

“Is he dead?” I ask.

“I’m not a doctor. Maybe. He might be,” she holds her breath, as if to savour a thought, "I put my heel through his eye.”

I step over the widening pool and in my mind I see Sam blowing out the candle. I see him licking the end of the wick and savouring the taste. I see him cracking the lady over head. Now, I see him looking at me, an eye hideously deformed from an intrusion. His good eye laid on me unmoving and marble like.

“You know him?” She asks.

“No.”

“I found this on him,” she says and it sounds like a concrete slab being pulled over stone. She pulls out a card from her blazer. There’s snap shots of her in the flash of intermittent light. A haphazard collection of images snap in time. She’s holding up my business card. Then I notice she’s smiling.